This week, dear listeners, we bring you an episode about musicals that Windy hates! That’s right, there are several classic musicals that Windy can’t get behind, and we dig into them here! But here at Xanadu Cinema Pleasure Dome, we prefer to love movies and not hate them, so we also bring to you an assortment of great musicals that you can watch instead.

This episode was recorded back in December, which means this is the last of the full-drunk recordings. (Well, for now, anyway.) If you have been pining for the days when we’d drunkcast with wild abandon, this even-numbered episode is for you.

If you would like to drink along, we recommend either Glenlivet 12 or some sort of tempranillo.

Show notes behind the cut!

Movies mentioned:
West Side Story
A Chorus Line
Showboat
Yankee Doodle Dandy
An American in Paris
The Band Wagon
The Phantom of the Opera
Cover Girl
Meet Me in St. Louis
Annie Get Your Gun
Oliver!
Les Miserables
Company

4 comments

“Phantom of the Opera” is my ex-wife’s favorite thing of all time, in all its forms. Enough said.

Annie Oakley’s life is covered very well & interestingly in a PBS ‘American Experience’ episode. In real life, the man she married, they met at a shooting competition, she kicked his ass and he basically realized right away that a) she was WAY better a shooter than him, which was awesome, and b) she could be his meal ticket. A match made in… show business, really. You might be able to find it on PBS’s videos site, but the page for the episode itself is right here.

“Oliver!” makes me think of… putting in a good word for the animated rendition of the story, “Oliver And Company.” Billy Joel music at its upbeat and melodious best, and a couple of my favorite quips of all animated film: “If this is torture, then chain me to the wall.” & “Isn’t it rather dangerous to use one’s entire vocabulary in a single sentence?”

You briefly mentioned Pirates of Penzance which reminds me of “The Pirate Movie,” not because it’s good but because it was aired over and over and over on HBO (or was it Cinemax?) during my childhood, thus it was my first and often-repeated exposure to ‘Modern Major General’ and the other pieces of Penzance the film decided to incorporate. (I remember the movie, vaguely, as a weird mash-up of a farce comedy, a teen romance, and an attempt to put on Penzance. Complete with a Star Wars lightsaber joke.) Ah, memories, fuzzy though they may be.

Thanks for the Annie Oakley link! I’m definitely going to check that out!

As for The Pirate Movie… whoa, it’s way back there in the corners of my brain somewhere. I remember seeing it in the theater, and never hearing a whit of it since. There was an animated sequence… And that music… I feel like I need to watch it again to see if my memory is right about how bizarre it was. And I think Kelvin Hatle needs to be here.

I remember Oliver and Company fondly! There was something about the forgotten Disney films of that era, where they were struggling to find relevance in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of strange material came out of the studio during those decades. Between The Aristocats in 1970 to Oliver and Company in 1988, you had things like The Rescuers (which is a really strange film, when you think about it) and The Black Cauldron (which is seriously way out there in WTF-landia). Then the Little Mermaid hit, and Disney was back into a golden age.

“The Band Wagon” is one of my favorite movie musicals, period. The variety of numbers is wonderful, as you mentioned the Triplets song is hilarious, and Nanette Fabray is too adorable for words. I would go back in time to hit on her in that era.

It also has Oscar Levant who is great in “The Band Wagon” and is one of the highlights of “An American In Paris.” He was known for portraying a glum or serious guy in much of what he did, a sort of adorable curmudgeon type. There’s an excellent scene in TBW where he says very few words to draw Fred out talking about Cyd, just lets him ramble. It’s super fun to watch.

I generally enjoy “Meet Me in St. Louis” but I agree that it’s more of a period piece snapshot and doesn’t have much plot. Not one of my faves but I don’t hate it. One of the best things about it is Margaret O’Brien as the youngest daughter, and the highlight of the film is the Halloween scene. It’s got a long tracking shot of her walking down the street where she’s just looking more and more scared as she gets closer to the house of the “scary” guy at whom she’s supposed to throw flour. Minelli directed the shot so well, and she’s really fun to watch in it.